The Sparks Fly Upward (6 page)

She'd scored a hit; he was less amused than he had been. ‘Ah, yes, the Froggy tooth-puller. Luckily, his papers were completed before the forger fell out with his wife. Never mind, I am sure the good Marquis will be attended to before the month is out.' He bowed. ‘Miss Dapifer.'

‘Sir Boy.'

But it was her blood left on the floor.

Stephen Heilbron found her standing in the middle of it. ‘My dear, your mother is asking for you. What is the matter?'

She was in Paris, in a cellar; she could hear the approaching footsteps of National Guardsmen. ‘I'm sorry, Stephen?'

He sat her down in the chair by the fireplace and took the one Blanchard had occupied. ‘Tell me what's wrong.'

She stared at him; confidences were foreign to her. In the fire-light his face was not unlike that opposite hers minutes before, dark and aquiline, both of an age, but whereas Blanchard's had been care
less
, her fiancé's was careworn, the Devil obviously having more concern for his followers' complexion than God had.

I have to learn to talk to him
, she thought.
We must share things.

What he wanted from her was friendship, comfort, devotion to his cause, absolute loyalty, not least her fortune, all of which she was happy to give him. Her own character would be a casualty, of course; his personality was such that it robbed other people of theirs but, again, that was a gift she could easily render in recompense for not loving him as her mother had loved her father.

Her return would lie in being useful to a man who would one day abolish the greatest evil under the sun. And the knowledge that Andrew Ffoulkes would never know he had wounded her almost to death.

She must not shortchange this wonderful man; theirs could at least be a meeting of minds, in which case she had to open hers to him.

So she told him—she was so unused to explaining her thinking and motives that it took effort.

He was astonished by her, as if he hadn't accounted for her having a life before she met him. Nor had he known there was such a thing as The League; he was both surprised and pleased. ‘Christian work,' he said.

‘Apparently, Sir Boy imposes limits to its Christianity,' she said. ‘He is not prepared to save those who do not agree with him.'

‘Condorcet,' he said. ‘Condorcet. Where do I know the name from? And you are friends with this man?'

‘Yes. I spent four summers in France with him and his wife. Busy as he was, he was good enough to give time to my mathematical studies. In '91, his wife and daughter came to England to stay with Mama and me.'

‘Mathematical studies?'

‘I am interested in mathematics,' she told him.

‘How very unusual.' She watched him turning the pieces of the jigsaw to make them fit. ‘
Condorcet
. Philippa my dear, are we talking of Condorcet the
Encyclopédiste
?'

‘Yes,' she said.

He sat back, his elbows on the arms of the chair, clasping his hands so that his mouth rested on them while he thought.

Philippa waited.

‘A revolutionary,' he said, without looking up.

‘And a republican. Yes.'

‘A member of the National Assembly.'

‘Yes.' She went on waiting.

‘An atheist.'

There it was. ‘But a great humanist, Stephen.'

‘A contradiction in terms, my dear. And this is the man you wish to see escape from a predicament that was much of his making. You would see him brought to England.'

‘Yes.'

He got up and walked around the room, while she watched him, his hands behind his back

He had never approved of the Revolution in France, even when it was young and fresh and Englishmen and woman less large-hearted than himself had been flocking excitedly across the Channel to witness the most radical experiment in history. He hadn't sought her opinion of it, presumably believing it to be the same as his own.

Blame Makepeace Dapifer Hedley
, she thought.

Not that her mother advocated revolution; she had suffered too much from both sides during America's fight for independence, as had Philippa herself. ‘Causes kill people,' she'd always said. But during a life that had seesawed between poverty and riches she had discovered both conditions to possess an equal share of saints and sinners, and that class divisions were a nonsense. In Makepeace's book, so was patriotism. People—individuals—mattered, not countries.

Perhaps now was not the moment to mention that, during the war between the United States and England, Makepeace had helped American prisoners of war to escape from England via her smugglers. She had not felt she was betraying her adopted country by doing it; the men were suffering,
ergo
they ought to go home.

It was her mother's love of freedom for the individual that Philippa had inherited. With gratitude.

Stephen, though, only loved God. She thought God frightened him somewhat; he was haunted by the judgment to be passed upon him when he died. It was as if he were one of England's prefects squirming with shame under God's schoolmasterly eye at the antics of a class for which he had responsibility.

The common people's disregard for Sunday worship, any worship, the drunkenness, crime and prostitution of the streets filled him with as much shame as if they were his family's. He didn't see them as the outcome of demeaning poverty, like Makepeace and Philippa did, but thought they could be cured by suppressing licentiousness, ‘which is the parent of every species of vice.'

God had told him to free the slaves and that would be done though it killed him. But God had said nothing about dividing property equally between rich and poor—an idea he regarded as born out of madness. Liberty, equality, fraternity would be found in Heaven and not before.

‘The Almighty has set before me two great objects,' he'd told her once, ‘the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of morals.' Sometimes she didn't know which he wanted most.

Condorcet, who called God a superstition . . . Condorcet, the advocate of women's rights, of divorce, who'd helped to pull down a king in order to set up a people . . . Condorcet was Stephen Heilbron's nightmare.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder. ‘I don't know any forgers, either,' he said. ‘I wish I did.'

A sob came up from her chest.
I was right to accept him
.

He sat down opposite her again. ‘I shall speak to Blanchard,' he said. ‘But if he is telling the truth and no counterfeit papers can be produced immediately, there's little for us to do but leave the fate of your friend in God's hands. Isn't that so?'

‘I suppose it is.'

‘Philippa?'

She looked up. ‘Yes, Stephen?'

He's reassessed me, she thought. His face was as loving as ever but there was disappointment there; he had metaphorically shouldered her—she'd become a burden, more interesting, perhaps, but a burden that he must either bear or lighten.

‘Philippa, if eventually we do get those papers and send them off to France and Condorcet comes to England, that must be the end of it. Consorting with an atheist is something I could not endure my wife to do. You see that?'

She nodded. She saw that.

‘Then I'll pay for the letter's stamp.' He clasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘Shall we go and shout at the bandsmen until they play a minuet for us?'

She walked out of the room with her hand on his arm.

Chapter Three

THE toasts were still in process—the French had taken them over. Glasses had been raised to His Majesty King George III.

To King Louis XVII in whatever darkness and filth the revolutionary
canaille
had cast the poor little boy.

To the remaining Bourbons.

To Andrew and Félicie, with gratitude for their hospitality.

To Makepeace, happy birthday.

To the emigré regiments aimlessly crumbling on the banks of the Rhine as they waited for the rest of the world to take up arms against the Revolution.

To whomsoever, whatsoever would enable them to keep on downing Lord Ffoulkes's champagne in the warmth and reminiscent brilliance of Lord Ffoulkes's house for a bit longer.

‘We are
now
on the Empress of Russia,' Makepeace said distinctly as Philippa and Heilbron joined her.

She'd been disappointed in her little Marquis who, maudlin with homesickness and liquor, had got up on a chair to declaim a poem to his dead King:

 

There'd been several verses.

A weeping abbé clutched Makepeace's arm for mental and physical support. ‘What did these generous masters do that the French people so cruelly massacre them every day on altars dressed by regicides?'

‘They didn't feed 'em,' Makepeace snapped.

Quickly, Heilbron signaled to a footman to fetch their cloaks. ‘Philippa, if you'll take your mother into the hall, I'll go and have a word with Blanchard. Where's Deedes?'

Philippa ushered Makepeace and a reluctant Jenny towards the door. ‘Are we going home? I'm booked for another waltz,' Jenny said.

‘Ma's getting ugly,' Philippa told her.

They stood behind one of the marble pillars to shelter themselves from the cold admitted by the open front doors. Outside in the square a gathering of local vagrants stood around flaming tar barrels and toasted in ale ‘Good old Ffoulksy who don't never forget us.'

The three women acknowledged the bow of a departing young Frenchman who was taking his pregnant wife home. At the steps he shouted for his carriage: ‘James, James,' and tutted, ‘Where
is
the man?' He helped his wife down to the street and disappeared into the night with her, still shouting.

‘That's a naughty coachman,' Jenny said.

‘There isn't a coach,' Philippa explained.

‘Oh?
Oh
. Poor things. Can't we ask Sanders to take them home? The lady shouldn't have to walk in her condition.'

‘Tried that once,' Makepeace said. ‘Humiliated 'em. Stiff-necked buggers, all of them.'

Reverend Deedes joined them, still put out by the waltzing. ‘And I fear we have lost Lord Malthrop. Lord Admiral Rodney intervened in our discussion and told him that he'd never heard of any negro being ill-treated in the West Indies.'

Philippa found Andrew Ffoulkes beside her. ‘You didn't tell me,' he said; he was looking at her oddly.

‘Tell you what?'

‘Heilbron. I came on him talking to Blanchard—he says you and he are engaged.'

‘Yes,' she said.

‘You didn't tell me.'

She smiled. ‘You've had other matters to concern you.'

‘Well, but . . .' He recovered himself. ‘As your godfather . . . What about it, missus, isn't she supposed to get her godfather's permission? Anyway, he's a fine fellow.'

Heilbron had come up and Lord Ffoulkes pumped his hand. ‘My congratulations, sir. You have plucked the finest rose in England's garden.'

‘That's my opinion as well, sir.'

It was awful. The footman was taking an age with their cloaks, the good-byes took another. At the bottom of the steps Heilbron bade her good night and kissed her hand. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her on the lips but he leaned close so that he could whisper: ‘Blanchard has convinced me he is telling the truth about the forger. I fear there is nothing to do but wait.' She was aware of Andrew standing above them in the doorway. Both men remained where they were while the closed carriage that was to take her, Jenny, Makepeace and Reverend Deedes back to Chelsea circled the square and headed for Piccadilly.

She just hadn't thought he would be so . . . so disturbed.

On the journey back, the silence of his companions was filled by the Reverend Deedes's opinion of the ball and the intransigence of the great men who had resisted his and Heilbron's arguments against slavery. His hearers were as devoted to abolition as he was but he continued to address them as if they, as well as the noble lords, needed persuasion.

After a while, Makepeace reached into the rack where she kept a loaded pistol—on quiet nights highwaymen sometimes abandoned their usual haunt in Kensington to attack the homegoers of Chelsea. She laid it meaningfully across her knee but it didn't stop him.

The Watch was out in the village. As Sanders brought the carriage to a halt outside Deedes's house, bobbing lanterns came up to it.

‘We're after fugitives from Lunnon, Mr Deedes. Evenin' Mrs Hedley, Miss Hedley, young mistress.'

‘What fugitives, Pocock?'

‘Don't rightly know, ma'am. Two of 'em. Wanted bad, seems. There's the government's own constables here to gee us up.'

Pocock was pushed aside and another lantern was held up at the carriage interior while its owner inspected their faces. Deedes reached for the door handle to let himself out. ‘As you can see, fellow, there are no fugitives in here. Are these men dangerous? Will the ladies be safe to go on? Had I not better accompany them home?'

‘No need,' Makepeace said quickly.

The government lantern bearer swung his light once more from Mr Deedes and Makepeace and decided the man was more in need of protection. ‘They'll be all right. I see their driver's armed. Where d'you live, ma'am?'